Fort Worth daily gazette. (Fort Worth, Tex.) 1882-1891, 1887-02-05
RAISIN MAKING.
An Interesting Description of California
Methods.

An Interesting Description of California
Methods.
In connection with raisin making the
following by a correspondent Of the Gin
cinnati Gazette, describing California
methods Of dealing with white muscat
and Malaga grapes, will be read with
interest: "For large vineyards gang
of laborers are employed, and they
board themselves in tents. Each is fur
nished with q large hooked pruning-knife,
with which he clips off the punches and
places them in shallow trays that are dis
tributed between the rows of vines. The
fruit is handled carefully, so as to avoid
breaking the skin of single berry; the
full trays are gathered up into two-hOrse
spring wagons and piled up So as to
many miles to some level place among
the foothills" where the surface has
been scraped and rolled until it is as
smooth as floor. Here the trays are
unloaded and the fruit emptied out upon
the ground. The grapes are thus spread
out in rows three feet. wide and several
hundred feet long, with narrow walks
between each row. Scores Of wagon
loads are thus deposited every day until
as many as fifty or sixty acres are covered,
by which time the first brought
are dry enough TO take up, anu they are
carried by the returning wagons. 1t re-
quires two weeks of dry hot weather 10
cure the smaller punches, at which time
they are gathered up, and at the same
time the larger punches are turned over
SO as to finish crying the under sides,
and another week or two will finish
them. They are all gathered into
boxes that will hold about bushel,
and hauled off to the packing house.
OF course q great many single berries
fall off in handling lunches, aud they
are carefully CLEANED from the soil by
women and children, and put up in sep
arate boxes. The ground is again COW
cred with fresh fruit, and this process
kept up for ten or twelve weeks, until
the last of the late growth of grapes are
all in. On reaching the packing house
the boxes of dried fruit are piled up in
tiers as high as the roof, and there are
allowed to "sweat" for few weeks. The
over dry punches absorb the too great
moisture of others, and the whole mass
takes on fresh and bright appearance.
They are then carried to the sorting
room, where women and men pass the
punches through their nimble fingers and
place the full and shapely ones in boxes
by themselves, which are marked "Lon-
don layers" and the less perfect in
another box, marked simply clay
ers." The latest departure from the
European methods is in the use of an srti-
fetal drying apparatus. To avoid the ex-
nense of hauling to and from the foot
hills or the desert, and to keep the fruit
out of the dust, and more especially to
do the work more speedily, the enter
prising raisin makers of Tustin have
constructed large steam dryer, capable
of carrying eight tons of grapes ct one
laying, ana which will require only seven
or eight days to complete its work. They
hsve so far dried nearly 100 tons of grapes
this season. If their raisins prove as sat
isfactory to the grocery trade as those
cured in the ordinary way, the machine
method will undoubtedly come into gen.
eral use.